What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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Appendix 6: Multiple regression analyses
Appendix 6
Multiple regression analyses
Multiple regression analyses were used to compare
attitudes towards learning about the Holocaust
among students from different religious groups and
after controlling for year group, vocabulary scores,
gender and number of books in the home.
Following the approach of Sullivan and Brown
(2015), the dependent variables were treated as
percentage scores in this analysis to make the
coefficients interpretable as percentage point
differences.
As shown in Table A6.2, the numbers of students
in each religious group varies considerably so these
results should be interpreted with caution due to very
high standard errors.
Table A6.1 indicates that Christian students and
Jewish students have attitudes which are significantly
more positive about learning about the Holocaust
compared to students with no religious affiliation.
However, this equates to 1.69 percentage points for
Christian students and 4.54 percentage points for
Jewish students. Furthermore, it should be noted
that Table A6.2 shows that, in the main, the variables
we controlled for were also related to students’
attitudes.
In sum, our analysis found no evidence that
Muslim students differed from the non-religious
majority in their attitudes to learning about the
Holocaust once relevant potential confounders had
been controlled. Indeed, vocabulary scores, number
of books in the home and gender all contributed
to differences in students’ attitudes. It should also
be noted that other variables (including those not
measured) will have also influenced students’
attitudes.
Table A6.1 The mean total score for the Attitudes towards Learning about the Holocaust scale,
by religious affiliation
Religious group
Number of students
Mean total score
(out of 44)
Standard
deviation
Mean score as
a percentage α
No religion 2,775 34.19 11.11 77.69
Christian 2,396 35.28 11.18 80.17
Buddhist 30 36.37 10.42 82.65
Hindu 50 34.60 14.26 78.64
Jewish 105 36.53 11.67 83.03
Muslim 704 33.75 12.51 76.71
Sikh 86 33.10 11.57 75.24
α When conducting multiple regression analysis, the mean total scores were converted to percentages to aid interpretation.
For example, a score of 34.19 out of 44 equates to 77.69 per cent.